There seems to be a widespread phenomenon which I’ve come to call The List. We’ve probably all seen it in action. Its one of the most popular passive-aggressive tactics.

Some background: Life brings us a steady stream of issues, large and small, throughout our days. Boundary issues, pet peeves, quality of life issues, lots of names have been applied to them.. Somebody’s music is too loud, somebody squeezes the toothpaste from the middle of the tube, somebody doesn’t do their share, we feel unappreciated about something, somebody puts a wet spoon in the sugar. Every human being encounters these things all the time, with every other human we come into contact with for any length of time. Its part of life, as inevitable and constant as the need to urinate.

When one of these issues comes up, the Good Communicator addresses it directly and without delay, approaching the person involved, explaining the situation and asking for what is wanted to improve the situation. A good communicator also knows there may well be issues coming the other direction too, so is prepared to reciprocate and negotiate. This principle is the bedrock of any healthy relationship, social or professional.

By contrast, when one of these issues comes up, the Passive-Aggressive says nothing, just quietly, stoically adds it to his List.

The passive-aggressive person resists discussion. He knows he’s Right, and the other person could not possibly have any valid points of their own, so must therefore be deficient (evil, a liberal, a martyr… insert your favorite hate-label here), so theres obviously no point in any discussion. (it certainly has nothing to do with any fear that discussion might turn up inconvenient facts that might then have to be taken into account. shhh)

Passive-aggressive logic dictates that the problem is not whatever issue is at hand. The Problem is a person. If only that person could be eliminated, things would be so much easier.

One day, the passive-aggressive finally snaps, reels off The List and Deals With the Problem – throws somebody out of the house or the relationship or the jobsite, or maybe throws a punch..

(… or comes in to work with an assault rifle…or signs the order to have one of his squads pick up the offender tonight at midnight.)

Among people truly committed to taking their passive-aggressive lifestyle to its extreme, the List is never even delivered – the offender is obviously so annoying, so against god that he doesn’t even deserve to know why he’s just been clobbered. Hangin’s too good for him!

The conscientious communicator gets labeled as the Loud One -the troublemaker- high maintenance. The passive-aggressive gets called the Quiet One, the strong silent type, the good girl.

Quiet = good. loud = bad

Mainstream Americans are raised in what is essentially a passive-aggressive culture.

Inevitably, it is a culture of distrust, because when dealing with passive-aggressive patterns, you can never really know where you stand, never know how long the next person’s List is, never know how close they are to the boiling point. “He’s got a file on you..”.

Some sub-cultures and cultures associated with certain minorities are considerably more loud and direct. They are generally vilified for this, even though their tendencies are more healthy than those of the uptight white people who berate them. This is one of the worst manifestations of cultural insensitivity.

Mainstream American culture preaches that clarity and negotiation are too much trouble. Its so much easier to bitch about people behind their backs, sabotage friendships, instigate long chain-reactions of drama, divide up the friends, generate legal battles, mafia hits (or shooting wars, if you happen to be the president), create life-long enmity…

Those crazy people who want to *talk* about stuff instead – they’re so high-maintenance. They’re ‘soft on _X_’ (insert favorite designated-enemy-label for X).

No price is too great, when the goal is ducking responsibility for your own communication. That’s the overwhelming message of the American mainstream.

So, in addition to the considerable degree of difficulty of developing the skill of healthy communication, we Americans can also look forward to being stigmatized in almost direct proportion to our mental health. (sigh)

But its well worth it.

A sane pariah has a far better shot at happiness than does a herd-animal. Good communicators are, by definition, good problem-solvers. This problem, too, can be solved. (hint: support networks of good communicators are helpful.)

People trapped in passive-aggressive patterns don’t comprehend the problem, much less have the skills to resolve it. Passive-aggressives have been trained to be proud of their own lack of communication skills – a vicious cultural trap. They’ve pretty much swallowed the Red Pill and taken their place in the Matrix.

Such people don’t understand that when we do this, we inexorably drive genuine trust and love from our lives. Many will never know why they are unhappy.

There seems to be a lot of confusion in the world about what boundaries are, and how they are formed.

That is very unfortunate (and hurts a lot of people), because this is one of the few topics in which theres no room for grey area. Why? Because ambiguity is what creates bad/nonexistent/dysfunctional boundaries. If there are grey areas, then –by definition- they are not boundaries. They are, at most, suggestions. Far more often, they are unexpressed, half-hearted or conflicting desires. A half-built dam won’t hold water.

Boundaries need not be set in rude, aggro-fueled or adversarial ways. Healthy boundaries generally aren’t. What they must be – to qualify as boundaries at all – is clear and consistent. That means clear to others, not just to us in our own heads (or to old friends who we’ve had a thousand conversations with, or who will take our ‘side’ regardless of facts).

A lot of other things seem to get mistaken for boundaries.

A desire unexpressed (or partly expressed – inaudibly, inconsistently, incoherently) is just that – a desire. It is *not* a boundary.

Hiding from someone, avoiding or cutting off contact (including when used as a technique to “win” an argument) is not a boundary.

Acting annoyed, and assuming s/he must be able to figure out why, is not a boundary.

Telling someone to f— off because s/he did something you didn’t like –that s/he didn’t know you wouldn’t like- is not a boundary.

Telling someone to f— off because you did something that you later decided you regretted is not a boundary.

Getting someone fired, or kicked out, or getting your boyfriend to beat him up, or getting your friends to talk bad about him is not a boundary.

People with passive-aggressive tendencies sometimes talk about boundaries as if they were a sort of supernatural force-field, like auras that magically emanates from them with no effort, forethought or communication required to create or maintain them. This erroneous belief is part of a terribly destructive pattern, leads inevitably to all sorts of conflict and drama, can retard or arrest development.

If I have not done the work to know and understand what I want, then, by definition, I do not have a boundary. How can I express something that I don’t know?

If someone doesn’t give me what I want – when I didn’t spell out clearly what I want – they have not violated my boundaries. I have failed to establish boundaries – and that is my fault, my responsibility – not theirs.

Clarity and consistency – the definers of boundary – often require effort and practice. The ability to set good boundaries is a skill –an absolutely essential survival skill for all human beings. But its not taught in most schools. To people who grew up in cultures that punish clarity and reward passive-aggressiveness (like ours in the USA), the effort to establish good boundaries can seem nearly insurmountably difficult.

Can’t I just hire somebody to do that for me? Or get my boyfriend or my Mom to do it?

No. You can’t. (You can try -many do- but the result will most assuredly not be healthy boundaries.)

No one can take responsibility for your boundaries but you. This is not because people are unkind or out to get you (some are, some aren’t). Its not even because some folks wouldn’t gladly set your boundaries for you if they could. (But they can’t).

Its because its physically impossible. No one can read your mind. No one can speak for you, but you. And no one should.

Boundaries are 100% the responsibility of the individual. I am responsible for establishing my boundaries. You are responsible for establishing yours.

In every developed nation on Earth save the US, education and health have been acknowledged as basic human rights throughout living memory.

The next President and his party are sweeping the elections because they want to bring the United States up to the standards of the civilized world, and prevent the US from falling further behind and winding up as a third world country – a fate the Bush administration has gone a *long* way to bringing down on us.

Why do I say Bush has driven the US toward ‘third world” status? Huge debts, a weak currency, economic meltdowns brought on by corruption and unbridled greed, huge inequities between rich and poor, increased teen pregnancy and drop-out rates, incompetent responses to natural disasters, squandering a once-mighty international reputation, using lies to launch a baseless and incompetently planned war which distracts the people from monumental government corruption and the routine violation of their constitutional rights to privacy… these are all classic hallmarks of a second-rate, third-world country.

If we don’t change course immediately and profoundly, that slide will become irreversible. If the British and Soviet empires fell, we can too. Educating our children, and raising the standard of living while reducing recidivism at the workplace (both effects of adequate healthcare) will begin the process of America regaining its place in the civilized world (and its economic power, while we’re at it). Hiring workers educated and kept healthy with government help is no more socialist than trucking goods on the interstates built by Republican President Eisenhower.

But if it makes you happy to label that “socialist” then knock yourself out. I’d rather live in a “socialist” country – like Britain or Germany or Sweden or Japan or South Korea or Canada – than a cut-throat “third world” country – like Iran or Pakistan or Bangladesh or Russia or Rep of Congo or Nigeria or Columbia or Mexico.

Please note: the countries on both lists have elected presidents/primeministers, and I’m not picking on the people who live there. The difference is that one group has a civilized system that works, the other has a dysfunctional mess. The choice is stark. Americans, which category do you want us to be in? your children and grandchildren will live with your choice.

I think theres been a broad shift in social process, at least in the west. A shift from counterculture as temporal slice (a generational set of trends/fads in thought and style that grow in reaction to previous ones, take over mainstream and become marketing tool, then die out) – to counterculture as ongoing minority identity (a set of ideas, values and style that become a sort of modern tribe/identity that continues indefinitely – deadheads, crustypunks, etc – somewhat like the gypsies, who’ve apparently been around for millenia and originated as a specific ethnicity but are now more differentiated by lifestyle)

If true, this idea might partially explain why it was so hard to “peg” Gen x (giving rise to its name) unlike the hippies, beats, big band, flapper and other waves in the past – we seem to have been the fulcrum of this deeper splintering into various social flavors – punks, goths, hippies, ravers, techno-geeks, gearheads, modern primitives – some of whom have taken their place along with the gay scene and traditional ethnic minorities and economic classes.

a comparison could be made to the caste system that grew in India in response to the need to facilitate peaceful, stable interaction between many disparate ethic/economic groups without attemting to homogenize & erase their identity (as was done in early American history).

Being -among many other things- a closet hippie (shhh – nobody knows), soon after the rainy season started, I started checking the trees around my block, on my occasional sanity-strolls, paying special attention to banding and bracing.

A common problem in places where there are good tree-planting programs is the follow-up. It feels great to help break up some concrete and plant a new tree, or to build an impressive staking/support system, but people often forget to come back and check on the trees. Six months or a year or two later, the tree has outgrown these supports and bands, and if they are not made of organic materials (as they always should be! -and untreated!) they won’t just fall away of their own accord. So, what you find is plastic or metal bands that have become tourniquets, cutting off the circulation of the plant (all the circulation happens in the bark) and ultimately killing the tree if it goes on too long..

Tsk! At least twelve or fifteen trees within a block or two of my house had severe scarring – and with nobody to notice, the culprits were still in place. Some had been constricted to narrow little waists, creating weak points that might break in a storm. Some were growing around bolts and bands, creating pathways for insect infestation (some of which were already being taken advantage of). Some branches and trunks had come into contact with wood braces, been rubbed halfway through by braces that had become saws as wind pushed trees back and forth against them over a period of months.

So I went through the neighborhood liberating the trees from their cruel bondage. fly! Be free!

Unscrupulous people are currently playing on ignorance, nationalism, and knee-jerk anti-American sentiment to take away free access to the net!

The internet’s backbone resides with an NGO that is gradually becoming more and more internationalized (gradual because the internet is too big and important now to risk sudden systemwide changes). The American government has never controlled the internet (though it has tried).

The world wide web was created mainly by academics to promote a truly free exchange of information *without regard to borders* for the first time in human history. They very consciously avoided creating any semblance of national borders on the net – for extremely good reason! As long as there were no borders there could be no easy censorship, and as a result, people all over our planet enjoyed what was for many their first truly free exchange of ideas and information. Its no coincidence that the first thing the Burmese Junta did when they began their violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators was to shut down the internet. It is not coincidence that approximately a quarter of our planet has shaken off dictatorships without firing a shot during the internet era. Free access to information has played an important role.

Recently this unprecedented and important wave of freedom is being threatened – legislated and blocked out of existence – made possible by the breaking up of the internet into little piddly national chunks that can be, for the first time, easily controlled and heavily censored by local governments. And of course, they have not been slow to take advantage of this new weakness

The result is the destruction of one of the greatest gifts ever given to mankind. If its allowed to succeed, it will be a tragedy unmatched in scope by anything except global warming.

Right now, people are being arrested and silenced, news stories – and, more importantly, blogs about stories no newsmen ever get near – are being squelched, irreplacable information is being flushed, and the struggle for human rights is taking a giant step backward. .

Do not support internet balkanization.
Fight national firewalls! circumvent them wherever possible. Do not use services that promote censorship or allow it on their affiliates in places that are at high risk.
Do not use internet addresses with “local” designations!
Do not support censorship!

Monogamists by definition always seek a monogamous relationship. But monogamous relationships often start with people they don’t know all that well, with whom not much depth or seriousness is possible at first. Frequently these relationships start out non-exclusively. Most of us call that “dating”. It has nothing to do with polyamory, and tells us nothing about how the person feels about polyamory.

Monogamists often enter non-monogamous relationships, always with the expectation – stated or unstated, conscious or unconscious – that if/when the relationship gets serious it will somehow automatically transform into a monogamous one. When it doesn’t, the mono often reacts by lashing out at the poly, sometimes seeking out another person to start a new relationship with while dumping the poly or, worse, doing so as a way of trying to manipulate the poly with jealousy. (which of course, since polys by nature tend to be not very jealous about the physical but place an extremely high value on honesty, often has the opposite of the intended effect).

This is often accompanied by a lot of emotional abuse triggered by your failure to magically -and without any previous discussion- transform into something you’re not. To add to the fun, since polys not only do not make up the majority, but are not even an established, well-understood minority with clear boundaries and support structures, this is often accompanied by vociferous disapproval and finger-waggling from most any bystanders, family members, etc – even people you would have thought knew better..

This sudden-dumping-often-with-hate-speech-and-sometimes-a-witch-hunt usually happens right at or soon after the time at which the mono and poly are forming serious bonds with each other, so, by definition, it happens at the time when the poly is most emotionally vulnerable. Good times..

I have watched this pattern repeat so many times, in my own life and in that of many people close to me, that I have come to see it as pretty much the inevitable end result of polys dating monos.

Tired of banging your head – and heart – against a brick wall? The answer is not easy, but it is simple:

Stop dating the monogamous.

This is very similar to the lesson that most mature folks in the gay community have learned: Leave those closet-cases alone. They’re nothing but heartache. This is one reason that gays have their own bars and hangouts. Not because they hate everyone else, but because they want to have a place to go where they have some idea that people they meet are playing by roughly the same rules.

Like any movement that has matured, occupied the broadly-acknowledged moral high ground, and grown to include most of the population, feminism no longer has a very specific meaning (if it ever did).

I have seen everything from misogyny to misandry, and justifications for both matriarchy and partiarchy being touted as “feminism”. Since theres no such thing as term-use police (at least, not effective ones), it can’t be stopped.
Ultimately, despite the perhaps inevitable muddying and watering-down of the term as it is used by huge numbers of people, there are very positive aspects of a culture that identifies itself –even vaguely- as ‘feminist”.

I have known people who proclaim that they don’t vote, because the system is corrupt and they’re not allowed to vote for who and what they really want to vote for, and voting is in some way preventing them from doing something to bring about change.

This doesn’t make sense.

Regardless of what you think about American politics or parties, no matter how corrupt the system is, there is still some relevance in voting. Taking 20 minutes out of your life once every four years in no way prevents you from engaging in political activities or direct actions or culture jamming or whatever else you choose.

You know damn well that Al Gore would not have ordered the invasion of Iraq. So, if you were too lazy or stupid to take a few minutes out of your life to vote in the presidential election, then you have a few drops of the blood of a couple hundred thousand Iraqis on your hands. And you will for the rest of your life.

The Iranians have a problem similar to the one we Americans have. They have elections, but not really free elections. As a result of the failure of their system to bring about promised reforms, the people stopped voting for the reformers. But, although Ahmedinejad is ten times worse than Khatami, Iran is no closer to revolution than it was before. Nor are we. As under Bush, people have suffered and died for no good reason.